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1981
1980 1981 1982 Events * China's population passes the 1 billion mark at 1,000,720,000. * Bob Marley dies. * Mauritania becomes last country to legally abolish slavery. Abolition is less than successful. According to the Global Slavery Index 2013, the country still has highest prevalence of slavery. * Reds is released. * Bitter Harvest is broadcast. * U.S. President Ronald Reagan appoints his campaign chair William Casey as Director of the CIA. Casey disgraces American reputation for respecting international law by supporting Nicaraguan Contra terrorism. * John Froines joins the UCLA faculty as professor of environmental health sciences. * District of Columbia abolishes the death penalty. * James H. Jones published Bad Blood. Timeline January * January 1: Federal Hourly Minimum Wage is raised from $3.10 (1980) to $3.35 an hour. There conservative Republicans and weak willed Democrats will keep it frozen until 1990. Real wages will begin declining against nominal wages in 1984. * January 3: John Lennon’s (Just Like) Starting Over and the album Double Fantasy top pop charts just weeks after the death of the former Beatle. * January 16: Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. * January 19: Pres. Carter suspends aid to the Sandinista governnment of Nicaragua. * January 20: Ronald Reagan inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States. * January 21: Iran frees U.S. hostages. * January 25: Mao Zedong's widow, Jiang Qing, is sentenced to death. Februrary * February 12: Darwin Day * February 14: Australia withdraws recognition of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. * February 17: Pope John Paul II meets with Philippine dictator Marcos in Manila. * February 23: Last hurrah of Spanish fascism. Antonio Tejero, with members of the Guardia Civil enters the Spanish Congress of Deputies, and stops the parliamentary proceeding in which Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was going to be named president of the government. The attempted coup d'état fails. * February 27: Unsponsored meeting of 45 medical professionals at the University of New Mexico to deal with health problems from uranium mining in the Fourt Corners. March * March 1: Ana Hickman is born in Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil. * March 9: Pres. Reagan signs a "presidential finding" authorizing covert action against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. By August U.S. intelligence agencies would be sporsoring Contra terrorism in Nicaragua. * March 30: U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan shot outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John Hinckley, Jr.. Two police officers and James Brady also wounded. April * March 2: Battle between Christian Maronite militia and Syrian army in East Lebanon. * April 21: Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko visits Yasukuni Shrine. May * May 10: Francois Mitterand is elected President of France, and announced that his victory belonged to "the forces of youth, of labour, of creativity, of renewal..." * May 13: Pope John Paul II shot in Rome by Turkish wingnut. * May 30: Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman is assassinated in failed military coup. June * June 5: The Centers for Disease Control reports an unusual number of gay men with destroyed immune systems suffering from a rare form of skin cancer and a rare form of lung pneumonia. * June 9: Natalie Portman is born in Jerusalem, Israel. * June 20: Riots in Casablanca, Morocco leave an estimated 100 dead. Mass graves. August * August 13: Iran claims Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces along the Iran-Iraq border. * August 15: Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko visits Yasukuni Shrine. * August 19: U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan appoints first female US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor. * August 28: Aparthied regime South African army invades Angola. September * September 13: Archconservative publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, William Loeb, dies at 75. October * October 14: U.S. House of Representatives votes to bloc AWACs sale to Saudi Arabia but the sale goes through because the U.S. Senate caves to lobbying from the Reagan administration. Under Arms Export Control Act of 1981 both house must vote against a sale to prevent it from being completed. * October 17: Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko visits Yasukuni Shrine, the third time in 1981. * October 21: Andreas Papandreou becomes Prime Minister of Greece. * October 30: Ivanka Marie Trump is born. November * November 23: Iran-Contragate in high gear as U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan signs top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the CIA authority to recruit and support Contra rightist terrorists against Nicaragua. Nicaraguan civilians murdered in state sponsored terrorism. December * El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador. * British Labour Party NEC opens investigations/purge of Militant Tendency. * December 4: Executive Order 12333--United States Intelligence Activities is issued. * December 11: UN Security Council chooses Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru to be the 5th UN Secretary-General. * December 20: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain sign a bilateral security treaty.